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A few weeks ago Mr. Vanilla and I were in the car and, being the upwardly mobile and white liberals that we are, we had on NPR. In particular, This American Life. Even more in particular, this episode about the cultural acceptance of infidelity.

Anyone that follows my Twitter knows how I feel about cheating in relationships. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for any of the parties involved. I’m particularly annoyed with sex bloggers that merrily write about cheating with the expectation that as long as they are fucking, the audience will continue to pat them on the ass and tell them how hot they are.  My personal standards for honesty in relationships are pretty intense. Fuck, I’m even on record about this.

For me, infidelity is taking an action or having a feeling that I think my partner would want to know but that I’m not telling him for some reason. I used to say that I ‘don’t do anything I wouldn’t want him sitting next to me while I’m doing,’ but I think that is pretty reductive and too prone to literal interpretation. Instead, any sort of keeping secrets feels like infidelity to me.

So, as Mr. Vanilla [since I’m already on a roll with asides, he really needs another name] and I listened to this story my first interest was sort of academic. I thought about my opinions about cheating and at one point nearly blurted out, “God, I fucking hate people that brag about this shit.”

Then I remembered who I was sitting next to. Mr. Vanilla cheated on his ex-wife. He feels like crap about it, he doesn’t justify it with excuses or think that it deserves accolades. Still, he was a cheater. And, some (who operate in the “once a. . . always a. . .” school) would say that he still is.

I contained my outburst and we were quietly listening and driving for a few minutes before I reached for the dial, blocked out Ira Glass and his ilk, and said, “well, that is sort of awkward.”

While infidelity is still an issue in polyamorous relationships, it tends to be less of one because there is less of an incentive or necessity to cheat in most of those arrangements. I’ve been poly for awhile now I’m newly (and quite happily) monogamous. Since I am coming from this other framework, for me the logical solution to having a longing for another partner is to discuss it and potentially change the organization of the relationship. For many people that are monogamous by default, it is to cheat.

Mr. Vanilla and I returned to the topic of the NPR report a few hours later when I reminded him that my monogamy was my choice and that I didn’t make it to restrict him. He re-affirmed his own decision to be monogamous with me. I told him that I hoped he would discuss it with me if he started to have any doubts and that I trusted him.

Fast forward a few days and he is visibly distraught before me after a harrowing conversation with his ex-wife that included a rehashing of his own infidelity. This reminder from a person he wronged of the pain that he caused her was causing him significant guilt and pain. What’s more it was laid bare to me because it interlaced with his fear of making the same mistakes again. Because I love him, every bit of me wanted to take on his pain as if it were my own, grant him absolution, tell him that he didn’t deserve to feel guilty. But I didn’t because it wasn’t true and it isn’t my forgiveness to grant.

What I could give him was the gift of my trust. And in this moment of seeing a person I love deeply at a low of self-doubt, I recognized that it was a very small consolation. But, despite his past mistakes I could look at him before me with compassion and love and know that I trusted him to act in ways that would not harm me. It was a trust that he earned through his actions and displayed character and that he knows all too well that he could lose.  But ultimately, I believe in him and his goodness and I believe in my own ability to bestow my trust and love where I see fit.

I’ve been grappling with something over the past few months as I embark on a serious relationship with a woman for the first time. My femininity feels under fire by my own fucked up gender programming. The reality is that it doesn’t matter how much Judith Butler and Eve Sedgwick I read. It doesn’t matter that I have idols like Tristan Taormino, Lee Harrington, and Bear Bergman. It doesn’t matter that I love genderbenders and all level of gender fucking. I have some fucked up assumptions and ideas about sex and gender and sexuality that infect my ability to be as fearless as I want to be.

This is a confession of sorts but also a cry for help. I think about myself in reference to kink and sex and realize that I associate submission and service with being feminine. I associate beauty, weakness, and delicacy with being feminine. And I also realize that I am so terrified of being seen as anything other than feminine that I put up some strange defenses against this.

Case study A: Ariel

Ariel is my gorgeous girlfriend. She is beautiful and petite and has long flowing hair. She moves gracefully on high heels. She also has a powerful job in a male-dominated industry and changes car batteries and asserts herself aggressively in conversations. She looks high femme but has always thought of herself as butch. Still, when I touch her I sometimes feel huge, ham-fisted, rough, and all-together ugly. I know she longs for me and I fail her because I don’t know how to be. On the one hand, strapping on a pretty dildo and fucking her for hours sounds like pure bliss but I know that getting to that point will be full of second-guessing myself and my desires and my actions.

Am I being entirely heterosexist in my view of this sexual relationship? Abso-fucking-lutely! Because she is feminine, I feel masculine. (We won’t even get into the terrible fact that I associate masculinity [on myself!] with ugliness) I don’t want to feel this way. It isn’t enlightened, it isn’t sex positive. I wouldn’t teach it to my students. But it infects my reality and I don’t know how to deprogram it.

Case study B: Michael

[Note: This section has been edited for nuance. The lack it previously exhibited, though, is likely symptomatic of my issues with binary thinking.]

Michael is a petite man. We are the same height and I outweigh him significantly. When we first met I didn’t think the relationship would work because of this. I thought I would feel huge and be self-conscious and afraid. So I submitted myself to him. He felt like he was capable of being in charge and I let him be. Even if I couldn’t be delicate and small by comparison physically, I knew I could shrink myself mentally. It works out well that he has discovered enjoyment of beating me until I cry, pulling my hair, grabbing my throat. (Again we won’t get into how fucked up it is that my way of feeling feminine involves simulated victimization) Even when I am initiating sex with him, it feels like an act of service and devotion. He often gives me feedback on how to touch and where and when. I siddle up to him and slither a limb around his body. I kiss gently. The touches are a seduction and they are a worship and only in my most wanton and least self-conscious moments do I allow myself to be aggressive and take up space.

Taking up space

I haven’t really defined what this means to me just yet. You may have guessed some of it by now, though. I think of it in terms of physical space – my body is larger and I attempt to diminish that regularly. I also think of it terms of political space – my voice should be smaller, my needs should be less important, my desires should be locked away.

This might seem ridiculous to some of you that have met me or read this blog. Of course I take up space in terms of talking about sex. Here I am now with this presence on the internet. Blabbing, opining, discussing in detail, issuing edicts and judgments and ideas. But some of that strength leaves me when I’m making love to some of the people I adore most in the world.

I know that every relationship goes through growing pains and these are no exception, but this issue feels bigger and scarier and more about me being fucked in the head than any I have run into before. So, dear reader, tell me what you think. How do I get my theory to line up with my practice? How do I deschool myself of gender? How do I embrace femininity in a way that doesn’t make me need to masculinize others? How have you done it or how do you wish you could?

So much has been said these past two weeks but I still feel like it isn’t for the rest of the world. I can’t articulate myself in a way that makes it as big as it is so I keep it to myself and I privately swoon to a few friends and still feel like I miss the mark. There are tears of pain and joy and I’m so grateful for everything I’m feeling. Another playlist:

We met for drinks a few months ago and then schedules got tight and new jobs were started and we lost touch. Carmine found me again a few weeks ago, telling me that he wanted to see me.

So we met for drinks and talked about school and teaching and the law. We also talked about lubes and blogging and the joys of rope and electro-sex. I’m attracted to Carmine but the conversation wasn’t sexy, it wasn’t flirtatious, it just was.

He asked me back to his place so I texted Jay to make sure it was alright. It was. I knew that something might happen but I wasn’t expecting it. Carmine is sweet and self-effacing. He has a slight Boston accent that makes my pussy twinge when he says words like “car”. I couldn’t, for the life of me see him making the first move.

He did. Standing in his living room he grabs me and kisses me. He leads me to the bedroom and begins taking off my clothes. We tumbled around on the bed for awhile kissing and groping. At one point he paused, excusing himself to go to the bathroom. I posed myself so that I would look effortlessly sexy when he came back in the room. On my stomach, legs bent and crossed at the ankles with feet in the air. He came back in the room and slid on top of me, caressing my back with his body and kissing the top of my head. I felt his cock pressing against my ass and I wiggled a bit as I looked over my shoulder at him.

“You have a baseball bat next to your bed.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you afraid of intruders?”

“No, it helps me think.”

I look at him quizzically.

“It is a guy thing,” he explains, “it is phallic.”

I smirk and decide to give him the benefit of the doubt. He is grinding against me and kissing my shoulders. He asks me what I want and I shoot the question back at him. So, he tells me he wants to fuck me and spanks my ass. Too softly.

I tell him I want to fuck him too but he’s going to have to hit harder. He does.

So we fuck.

Yeah, I know, I always skip that part. Here, let me give you some highlights. He slides into me and his cock is thick and hard and I squeeze him. His eyes widen a bit and so do mine. He pins my hands beside my head. He squeezes my wrists hard and it hurts and I really love it. I scream, a lot. Obscenities, sacrilegious prayers, and incomprehensible things. Throughout it all, Carmine retains a placid and contemplative look on his face. I smile and he smiles back but he is already smiling. I wonder if there is some joke that I am missing. And as his cock slams me, sometimes too hard and too deep. So aggressively that I have to remind him that my cervix is there, he still smiles. I wonder if this has something to do with the baseball bat.

So, we finish and I bite my lip and steal a quick glance at him. I giggle a bit. I’m not being myself so much as an approximation of myself. It is okay, he might know this or it might be too complex for the moment or he might not even care. I ask him to explain the baseball bat again. He picks it up and shows me. He is laying on his back next to a puddle of ejaculate with a baseball bat in his hands and my naked body slung partially over his. He looks a bit like he owns the world. He holds the bat like he is expecting a pitch and moves it back and forth a bit. I duck and giggle. He explains that he’s never even played baseball on a team and he isn’t that big of a fan. It just works. He tousles my hair and asks if I want a cigarette.

I tell him that I’ve never had a cigarette after sex before. Maybe it is too much of a cliche. He gives me an incredulous look. Law students are apt to smoking and Carmine knows that when I’m having a drink, I’m prone to a cigarette or two. I tell him that I’ve probably fucked smokers before but the cigarette never came up. He tells me it can’t be beat.

We slide back into our clothes and walk out on the porch and talk about evolutionary biology and have a smoke. He isn’t lying, it is a really good cigarette. The night is hot and exceedingly Southern he tells me that he hopes that now that we’ve gotten the preliminaries out of the way, we can get more adventurous next time.

Oh, thats right I left out some details. I met Carmine because he likes cross dressing and taking it in the ass from girls with strap-ons. He is also perfectly capable of spanking me and pinning me to the bed while he fucks me hard. Interesting how people and their sexualities aren’t just one thing. My life and relationships would be much too boring if that were true.

The South is my adopted home but I don’t always get along with Southerners. Most of my friends here are other Northern transplants, but I know my fair share of people born and bred in the dirty dirty. Ian is one of those people. He has a mild twang in his voice, he is exceedingly polite, and he is a tall drink of water. He is also bisexual, has a very nice cock, and is one kinky bastard.

Jay and I have been fooling around with Ian lately and he has me thinking about how purely joyful and fun sex can be. See, Ian is hilarious, he likes to laugh and he likes to make his partners laugh and the fact that he may be fucking someone is immaterial to him deciding whether or not to tell a joke. In fact, he pointed out that my pussy gets extra tight when I laugh, this all might be very intentional!

The sex we have been having with Ian isn’t sensual, poetic sex. It also isn’t rough, aggressive sex. In short, it isn’t sex blogger sex. But I love laughing in bed, it is the most natural thing in the world for me. (Listeners of Bedroom Radio know that I giggle after most orgasms.) Something that falls by the wayside in erotica is just how hilarious sex is. Just by itself, inherently, it is prone to serious laughs. You have naked people, genitals, bodily fluids, and tricky maneuvering. When God is in the mood for some slapstick comedy, he peers down on everyone fucking. And smiles.

In many ways, Ian is the perfect third for Jay and I. He matches our silly and playful attitudes. I don’t have to affect some fort of sex kitten persona with him. I get to sarcastic, bold, and forthright. I ask for what I want unabashedly with no coy or seductive pretenses.

Last night when Jay filled his hand with lube and spilled most of it on the bed, we all laughed. When Ian pointed out that it looks like snot, we laugh some more. When I slip and nearly hit the floor stepping over the spot where Jay spilled the lube, we all completely lost it. And it is okay. Nothing is missing. The genitals all remain and the adventurous spirit keeps hold. I’ve never believed in the idea that a “moment” can be lost but even if that is true, a moment given over to laughter with friends hardly feels like a sacrifice.

The sweating and grunting? The screaming and whimpering? The pleasure that takes us over? They are important too, and they have their own moments. But they aren’t what make this sexy and fun – I don’t know if they are even the goal.

[Curious about that picture at the top? Well this is what happens when I hand Jay a marker and tell him that he can write on me. We later discovered that I left a stamped impression of fireworks on the bed sheets. What can I say, it was the 4th of July.]

“You’re going to write an angry blog entry about this, aren’t you? Or a Twitter?”

“No, I don’t do that.”

“I feel really bad.”

I can’t see his eyes because he is wearing mirrored sunglasses. I feel exposed. Realizing that impending tears are stinging at my eyes, I wish I had a pair of my own.

“It’s fine, really.”

“I’ll make it up to you.”

So, I get in my car and drive away while he continues with the very important things he has to get done that day. His excuses aren’t even excuses, they are totally reasonable. Jude lost his job and has been frantically applying for new ones, he has a lot of places to still try. I’ve made him feel like shit because he can only meet me for a few hours and have a drink.

Still, the tears are starting to sting and as I pull out of the parking lot, I shake my head. I’ve tried to make sure that our dialog is something like a movie. Dramatic, dry, witty. This is the moment where he is supposed to call me and tell me to come back. He’ll grab me as I step out of the car and pin me against the door and kiss me.

But I keep driving.

I get stuck in traffic and send what I am pretending is a playful text message.

“Now that I’m in this traffic, I am mad at you.”

He calls a few moments later and tells me that the place I suggested was hiring. I hold my breath. He launches into more apologies. I feel the tears stinging again, and my gum gets slimy as my mouth starts producing extra saliva. I tell him I need to concentrate on driving and get off the phone.

I stop for gas and as I’m pumping I send another message.

“Why didn’t you kiss me?”

“OMG I am such a retard. I had so much on my mind I didn’t even think about it.”

It occurs to me that kissing people isn’t an item on the to-do list and usually, when I don’t think about kissing someone it is because I really don’t want to kiss them. I volley back the classic pained martyr response:

“It isn’t important.”

“Yes it is, I’m a jackass.”

“Not being attracted to me doesn’t make you a jackass.”

Passive aggressive with a side of self-deprecation. This is the man that regularly tells me that he wants to rape me and now I’m taking jabs at him because I haven’t been kissed. I feel like a child and a fool.

He replies, “No, I just wasn’t in a remotely romantic or sexual mood. This is how I get when I’m depressed.”

I know what he is saying. He has been in this emotional state for weeks. I realize that I’m being the most shitty and unsupportive friend to him right now. I also feel embarrassed and conflicted. I am still holding out for the movie ending but gas isn’t 4 dollars a gallon in romantic comedies.

Does my rational mind know that Jude does want me and today’s just a bad day? Sure.

Does my rational mind win out over the feelings of the girl that feels like she is back in high school – fat, rejected, foolish? No. I am still that girl.

So, I send one last passive aggressive message: “Okay. Feel better. Bye.”

Then I turn up the 80s radio, and let the tears finally come.

Last night Jude and I re-hashed a conversation about a fear of mine and this morning I read a post on Polyamorously Perverse by Tom Paine that speaks to that fear. He recently committed the mortal sin (and I did too, in his comments section) of calling another sex blogger out on something inappropriate they were doing. The details of that other blogger’s life and work aren’t the point (it is just a classic story about a good writer recounting being a bad person – plenty have made a mint on it and hopefully she will too.) Tom Paine describes some important facets of poly (or any open relationship) that seem like they should be obvious but they aren’t.

The people that are being honest* with their partners and doing things correctly always stand at risk. Especially when they play with people that are single but inherently monogamous. This accounts for my conversation with Jude. I’ve told him my fear that what I have with him or might have with him has a built-in expiration date until he can find a girlfriend that he commits to. Now, there are a variety of reasons that I could never be that woman in his life (the fact that I am already in a committed relationship might not even top the list) but it leads to some uncomfortable twinges when we talk about our lives. He feels absolutely no jealousy towards Jay but does feel a bit towards the other men I speak to. And when he tells me about other women, my sense of urgency to get to him and get to be with him is increased.

Now, most of you might be thinking, “Jesus, Ellie, you have Jay and you have these other people, you are so lucky, stop complaining!” I can’t say that I even have an answer to that sentiment other than the gut feeling that I both know how lucky I am and still want to honor the challenges that our little household faces on a daily basis.

So, Tom’s thoughts on the trepidation he and C. experience about their third partner leaving them for someone monogamous is a real fear in my life right now. One that could thwart something lovely for me before it even really starts. And also a fear that has me feeling like a bad and selfish person who would begrudge a friend finding happiness. See the rub there?

Ultimately, though, this is all about honesty. I don’t think that a sex blogger has an obligation to be honest to anyone other than their romantic partners. So when I see someone that is being honest with everyone but their romantic partners, it rubs me the wrong way. Here is the comment I left for Tom:

Confessional writing about these sorts of “sins” isn’t productive if everyone pats you on the back and says you are a princess. In fact, it only becomes enabling. So many of us are writing sex blogs to seek the approval of other people (of course it is fashionable to say “I write this only for myself” as if that explains why one would host and promote it on the internet.) I don’t think there is anything wrong with getting that validation but one can’t admit wrong-doing without being spanked for it a bit. If you go through your life that way, you will be convinced that your actions are somehow okay.

I got blasted/warned/attacked on this blog when Jay and I started seeing each other. Even though I was being COMPLETELY honest with C (my C, not Tom’s). I didn’t feel it was fair but I also knew that my experimenting was reminding people of a lot of bad memories and feelings. While this blog isn’t exactly a public space (it is mine), I have no reason to shut out the (often helpful) perspectives of others. Even if they don’t speak to me, they likely speak to someone.

*Full disclosure: Many of my clients are married or in relationships. I have deeply complex and conflicted feelings about my place in their lives. However, one thing I will say is that this fact is why many of them would never be lovers and will always be clients. No matter how much they turn me on.

Feministe is having a (very heteronormative) discussion about what it means to be a feminist boyfriend. Now, I’m not saying that there isn’t some useful work being done in the comments there – the most important suggestions seem to be about recognizing privilege, deferring, and standing up for feminism to other guys, oh, and not making jokes about PMS (whatever!).

It occurs to me that the way to get anyone concerned with any issue is to demonstrate to them the impact that it directly has on their life. Now, certainly injustices done to a woman in his life would make many feminist boyfriends care deeply about feminist causes. But, I would argue that this is going to elicit a very particular, personal, and only partially useful response – the desire to protect his partner. Now, I think that everyone in life can use a cheering section but a protection response sort of buys into a whole ‘nother set of gender stereotypes, those surrounding masculinity.

But guess what? The word “masculinity” only came up once in 75 comments. So, here is where I think that the Feministe discussion falls flat – it assumes that men need to respond to feminism and support it in some intrinsically male way. Well fuck that, in my book a feminist boyfriend is one that recognizes the gender wankery all around us and understands what it is doing to both of us. He sees that masculinity (as an institution) is just as insidious as femininity and that they depend on each other to survive. My feminist boyfriend knows that sexual violence against men isn’t an anomaly and bravely shares his experiences with it to give other men the courage. My feminist boyfriend cross dresses if he feels like it. Has a beard if he feels like it. Lets me fuck him in the ass if he feels like it. My feminist boyfriend sees the things he is coded by society to be and makes his own fucking decisions about that – just like his feminist girlfriend.

[via BeingAmberRhea]